Enhance Vehicle Status Cards With Templating

Introduction to Vehicle Status Card and Its Current Limitations

Hey there! Let's dive into a neat feature request that can significantly improve how we visualize information on vehicle status cards. Imagine you're tracking your car's fuel level, available distance, and other crucial metrics, all within a sleek dashboard. That's what the vehicle status card aims to do. However, as it stands, there are some limitations, especially when dealing with the nuances of data sources and the need for custom formatting. This article will help to resolve these limitations. In this article, we'll explore the current limitations of the vehicle status card, specifically focusing on the challenges of displaying fuel levels, distance, and values pulled from deeper attribute levels. We'll then delve into the proposed solution: introducing templating capabilities to the vehicle status card. With templates, we can create more dynamic and informative visualizations, ultimately enhancing the user experience. Stay tuned as we break down the problem, the proposed solution, and how you can benefit from this feature enhancement!

Currently, the vehicle status card is a great tool for providing a quick overview of your vehicle's essential stats. You can easily monitor things like fuel percentage, AdBlue levels, and potentially even available distance. But here's where things get a bit tricky. The current setup works well when the data comes directly from the entity state, such as the fuel percentage. This data is straightforward, readily available, and easy to display. The card can efficiently visualize this information using bars and numerical values, giving you a clear picture of your vehicle's status at a glance. However, when you start pulling data from attributes, especially those that don't have built-in units, or when the data is buried deeper within the attribute structure, the current card's functionality hits a snag. This is where the limitations become apparent, and the need for a more flexible solution emerges.

Let's take a closer look at the fuel and distance visualization. The fuel percentage, drawn directly from the entity state, is displayed as a percentage, which is perfect. The card can easily handle this, showing a percentage value alongside a progress bar. But what about the available distance? This value often comes from attributes, and it might not have units specified. This means the card could display just a number without context, leaving you guessing whether it's in miles, kilometers, or something else. The absence of units can make the information less useful, requiring you to look elsewhere to understand what the number truly means. Furthermore, the architecture of how the data is stored can present another challenge. Some data, like battery voltage, might be nested deep within the attributes structure, such as attributes.BatteryVoltage.value. The current card setup might not be flexible enough to access and display this kind of deeply nested data. This is where the feature request for templating comes into play, offering a solution to these limitations. The ability to use templates within the vehicle status card would allow us to format the data, include units, and access nested attributes, making the card far more powerful and versatile.

The Core Problem: Data Source and Formatting Challenges

The heart of the issue lies in the inability to handle diverse data sources and the need for flexible formatting. The current vehicle status card works best when data is directly available and consistently formatted. But, in the real world, data often comes from various sources, each with its quirks and requirements. Some values might be percentages, others might be raw numbers, and still others might be buried within complex attribute structures. This lack of flexibility makes it challenging to present all the information in a consistent, easy-to-understand manner. Let's break down the main issues in detail to fully grasp the problem.

First, consider the units and context problem. When you're displaying information like distance or battery voltage, the numbers alone aren't very helpful without context. Is it miles, kilometers, or volts? Without specifying the units, the user has to guess or look elsewhere for clarification. This extra step undermines the card's primary purpose: to provide at-a-glance information. Secondly, the challenges of accessing nested attributes are significant. In many systems, detailed information is stored within nested attribute structures. For example, battery voltage might be hidden within attributes.BatteryVoltage.value. The current vehicle status card struggles to navigate these complex data structures, limiting what information it can display. This forces users to find workarounds or rely on other tools to access the necessary data. Lastly, the lack of templating prevents custom formatting. The current card offers limited options for how data is displayed. You can't easily add prefixes, suffixes, or custom text to provide more context. This inflexibility makes it difficult to tailor the display to specific needs or preferences. For instance, you might want to show the fuel level as